Fig is not the first place to do this... Train Fervor was also funded in this way, and the backers where made share holders in the project. Mind you, this seems to be doing a lot better.

Yes although to be fair the article also does not state that this was the first occurrence either. The Fig platform is certainly a very easy mechanism for enabling it however and it does seem to have at least some adherence to US legislation (from what I saw anyway)

Thinking about investing 1k into PoE aswell, the game come's out next year, might be worth it.

The breakeven point of 500k-ish seems easily achievable, PoE 1 did it in 7 months and the sequel should do it quicker given the praise of the first game. The first game also sits at a million copies total according to SteamSpy.

The only snag is that the 500k breakeven figure assumes all copies are sold at full price, which of course given Steam sales isn't going to be the case. If half the copies are sold in one of Steam's "50% off seasonal sales" then I guess the breakeven point doubles?